Did not open the observatory Sunday, 12 January 2025. At sunrise Morning morning, 13 January, the nearly Full Moon was setting in the northwestern sky, as seen in this iPhone 15 Pro Max photo (5X lens, cropped).

Click or tap on image for larger version

Shortly after moonrise on Monday, 13 January, the Full Moon occulted the planet Mars at opposition. Unfortunately, the Moon and Mars were too low in the eastern sky to photograph the occultation from my observatory. However, on a cold night I did go outside to view Mars as the Moon approached it and just after the occultation was over. Mars was difficult to see with the naked eye. The view through 7x50 binoculars was lovely with Mars quite evident near the bright Full Moon.

As an experiment, I used my iPhone 15 Pro Max (5X lens) to photograph Mars and the Moon. Using the Camera app, the exposure could not be reduced enough to prevent the Moon from being too overexposed. The iOS app NightCap Camera provided better images since it has full manual exposure control. It was still challenging to get an exposure short enough to not overexpose the very bright Moon and yet show Mars.

The images shows Mars and the Moon just before disappearance (left; ISO 50, 1/120sec) and just after reappearance (right; ISO 34, 1/125sec). Considerable post-processing was done in Adobe Lightroom Classic. The images are significantly cropped from the full-frame 5X lens photographs.

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